In his third night back since he was briefly suspended by Disney, Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at media companies Sinclair and Nexstar’s decision to continue preempting his late night show on their ABC affiliate stations.
“We are broadcasting to about 75% of the country from Los Angeles, California, tonight,” Kimmel quipped at the top of his Thursday night “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” monologue. Following another rapturous standing ovation after he walked onto the show’s stage, the host sarcastically asked, “Can we not do that every night? I mean, I appreciate it, but I also hate it. I really do.”
“Our monologue from Tuesday night has more than 21 million views just on YouTube alone,” Kimmel noted at another point. “And I want to say, we couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.”
Promoting his one-week shift to Brooklyn next week, the comedian joked, “What we have to do now is stay on the move, so the FCC can’t get us. We’re taking the whole gang. We’re taking Guillermo [Rodriguez], we’re taking Lou [Wilson], we’re taking the band.” In a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Trump administration’s latest public health controversy, Kimmel added, “And we’re going to take a big bottle of Tylenol — just for fun.”
“We can’t trust anything anymore,” he later noted, calling out President Trump, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on their plummeting approval ratings. “These guys, after accusing me of misinformation, are waging war against our old friend Tylenol. That cute little caplet we’ve known and eaten for years is now Public Enemy No. 1.”
“One of the things I want to do when we’re in New York — and I want you to go with me here — I want to go see the escalator that tried to viciously attack the president this week,” Kimmel told his audience, referencing the escalator that stopped working as Trump was riding it at the United Nations building in New York City on Tuesday.
“Have you been enjoying Trump’s most ridiculous distraction from the Epstein files yet?” Kimmel asked, mocking the outrage that the escalator mishap has provoked from Trump and his supporters. “They act like they dropped him into shark-infested waters. It was an escalator! You know what another word for ‘frozen escalator’ is? Stairs!”
“I’m starting to get confused,” Kimmel admitted. “Is [Trump] the strongest, healthiest, most physically powerful man-beast ever elected president, or a brittle-bone grandma with osteoporosis? Which is it?”
